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MILTONIC ENIGMAS 



BY 

PROF. JOHN A. HIMES 

Editor of Milton's Paradise Lost 



MILTONIC ENIGMAS 



BY 

PROF. JOHN A. HIMES 
Editor of Milton's Paradise Lost 



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Copyright 1921 by 
JOHN A. HIMES 



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OGT 24 1921 



MILTONIC ENIGMAS 

The term enigma with reference to the problems that 
meet readers of Milton is used from a conviction that 
when a true solution is reached it must meet the an- 
nounced conditions and exclude alternatives. A dash of 
present-day laxity at the meaning of a word or passage 
is pretty certain to land in error. The chief qualification 
needed in the student in addition to a grasp of particu- 
lars is the ability to translate figurative into plain lan- 
guage, or perhaps as often from Biblical into Classical 
metaphor. It is safe to assume that Milton was pos- 
sessed of accurate scholarship as well as of sound com- 
mon sense and we shall be less ready to believe him capa- 
ble of blunders or bad taste. It pays richly to dwell upon 
his words long enough to think vagueness out of our- 
selves not out of him. These items are prepared from 
full annotations in manuscript of the poems and are 
printed for the consideration of teachers and others who 
are willing to compare them with Milton's text and so far 
as possible with what is said by other editors. Opinions 
from any such upon these comments will be gratefully 
received. A number of the items have been published in 
the Modern Language Notes of Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity. 

I. ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT DYING OF A COUGH. 

The most misleading error in the interpretation of this 
early poem I believe to be a failure to distinguish between 
natural and grammatical gender. Masculine Winter 
must of course woo one of the opposite sex. What he 
seizes upon is the anima (soul, or physical life) which is 
feminine whether in youth or maid. But critics have 
transferred the gender of the noun to the sex of the child 
and thus obscured the meaning of important lines. 

Dr. Thomas Newton's edition (1753) says: "In some 

(3) 



editions [Warton specifies Tickell's and Fenton's] the 
title runs thus — On the Death of a Fair Infant a nephew 
of his dying of a cough; but the sequel shows plainly that 
the child was not a nephew but a niece and consequently 
a daughter of his elder sister, Anna Milton (Phillips)." 

It is difficult to see how "a nephew of his" could have 
been inserted in the title except by one who knew, prob- 
ably by Milton himself. On the other hand, it is easy to 
understand how some editor who was ignorant or for- 
getful of his Latin gender thought that the conditions 
required the child to have been a niece and simply 
dropped this portion of the title. The wrong way once 
entered upon was easier to follow than to retrace. 

The passage whose interpretation is affected is 11. 50- 
56. Nothing is more common at the death of a child 
than to guess at what it would have become if it had 
grown to manhood. Inasmuch as the Infant's father 
"held a situation in the Crown's Office in Chancery" what 
would have been more natural to expect than that the 
child at maturity would fill the place of a jurist or states- 
man? This conjecture might express itself in associat- 
ing the genius of Astraea (Justice) with the child. The 
next line (53) is in recent editions printed thus: 

"Or wert thou [Mercy] that sweet smiling youth." The 
bracketed word was "suggested in 1750 by John Heskin 
to fill the obvious lacuna." Masson says, "There can be 
no doubt that Mercy was meant." Notwithstanding this 
high authority I am not convinced. "Smiling" does not 
fit mercy as an epithet, or "youth" as an appositive. 
Tearful would come nearer as an epithet, because of 
mercy's relation to pity and any appositive would have 
to be feminine to agree with misericordia. The fact that 
Mercy is throned between Justice and Truth in the Hymn 
on the Nativity (141-146) is altogether irrelevant. 

I am confident that the "sweet smiling Youth" is no 
other than the boy Ganymede ^ yavos/xe'So/xat, joy-inspir- 
ing) who on account of his beauty was snatched from 
earth by Jove's Eagle (Aquilo) to succeed Hebe (Youth) 
as the cup-bearer of the Olympians. The second sugges- 
tion, therefore, as to the Infant's destiny is that with the 



spirit of Ganymede (Joy) to animate him he might be- 
come a poet as his uncle was already in conscious ability 
and aspiration. Both nephew and uncle were heirs to 
the same love of music from the same ancestor, the elder 
Milton. 

But what has that to do with Ganymede? There are 
two main sources of poetic inspiration, very real and 
positive sources, Joy and Sorrow. Milton has many 
studies of their manifestations in his poems early and 
late. They usually appear under names familiar in my- 
thology, Urania and Calliope, Pan and Sylvanus, Gany- 
mede and Hylas, Fauns and Nymphs. In a more ex- 
tended and intimate comparison they are portrayed in 
U Allegro and II Penseroso. The home of these two pas- 
sions in the heart is figured in Par. Lost IV. 703-8, based 
on Prov. XIV. 10. Ganymede and Hylas are paired in 
Eleg. Sept. 21-24. Ganymede is Joy, as his name indi- 
cates; Hylas (vXr], wood). Sorrow scarcely less beautiful 
and loved, is related to the sombre Sylvanus, like him as- 
sociated with the Nymphs (Grief), by them caught bath- 
ing in a shaded pool and borne away into Neptune's 
realm. Ganymede is rapt by Jove's Eagle into the sky and 
given a permanent abode on Olympus. With the temper- 
ament of either Hylas or Ganymede the Infant might 
have become a poet, but could Milton for an instant hesi- 
tate as to which to prefer for his nephew? In spite of 
crude assertions to the contrary Milton is in fact the 
most cheerful of poets, but in a profound, not in a shal- 
low or superficial way. 

A third possibility looms up. The Infant may own the 
genius of that crowned Matron. The interpreters have 
not ventured to carry her identification beyond the poet's 
own addition, sage, white-robed Truth. She does in a 
measure resemble Spenser's Una, but she is more. She 
is the Matron by eminence, the "towered Cybele, mother 
of a hundred gods," all light-bearing divinities, that 
heavenly brood presently mentioned. She is white-robed 
by reason of the light in which she dwells. Her temple 
at Athens was called the Mt^t/dwov, her priests were Galli 
(cocks) because of their office in heralding the day. Her 



name, Cybebe or Cybele is apparently related to nv^ri, or 
Kf.<^a\ri that is, the head, the citadel of Truth's empire. 

Now the third alternative is seen to be the possibility 
of the Infant's development into a Philosopher. Milton 
was at this period imbibing Greek philosophy at Cam- 
bridge with unquenchable zest. Similar advantages to 
his nephew at the proper age might train him for the 
headship of one of the departments at the University — 
departments identical with the divine offspring of the 
crowned Matron. 

It remains to be noted that the trio, the jurist (or 
statesman), the poet (or musician), and the philosopher 
(or teacher) are let down in cloudy throne to do the 
world some good. They are indeed kings and, though of 
ill-defined authority, rule the spirit more effectually than 
many who sit on thrones of state. 

As to lines 76, 77 Masson remarks: "One can hardly 
say that this prophecy was fulfilled in Edward Phillips 
and John Phillips, Milton's nephews, the brothers of the 
fair infant born after her (his?) death, yet they are both 
remembered on their uncle's account." Masson must 
have felt — his hesitation shows it — that at such a time as 
this professed divination with respect to his sister's na- 
tural descendants, had Milton been weak enough to at- 
tempt it, would have been mockery, but he found in the 
prophecy of Isaiah (chaps. LIV-LVI) consolations for 
childlessness whose exalted beauty and tenderness must 
have appealed strongly to him and impelled their appli- 
cation to his sister under the conditions that occasioned 
their first utterance. The culmination of the promises 
is in LVI. 5 — "Even unto them will I give in my house 
and within my wall a place and a name better than of 
sons and daughters : I will give them an everlasting name 
that will not be cut off." This is not cheap fortune- 
telling; it is Scriptural promise even to the emphatic re- 
dundancy repeated in the poet's lines. 

II. HYMN ON THE NATIVITY. 

After the natural relations of the Event have been 
fixed interest is centered in two prophecies quoted from 



Isaiah and Jeremiah by the evangelist Matthew. The 
first of these to need elucidation (Matt. IV. 15, 16; Isa. 
IX. 1, 2) appears in lines 168-172 of the Hymn — The 
old Dragon underground, &c. Very little is added to our 
comprehension by the usual reference to Rev. XII. 4 and 
XXII. 2. What special thing does the Dragon stand for? 
The Prophecy from Isaiah gives us a clue. 

The Dragon under ground is the power of darkness 
risen out of the region and shadow of death — that is, 
ignorance of God and His word — extended all over the 
pagan world and spread like twilight even over the land 
reserved for God's people. The coming of Christ gave 
light, expelled the darkness like a substantial thing, first 
from Judea where He was born and His birth divinely 
heralded, and then from Galilee where He lived. Thus 
of more than half the territory of Israel the usurper was 
dispossessed and lost his sway. Not without struggle, 
however. The hard-hearted cruelty of Herod in slaughter- 
ing the male infants of Bethlehem was the stroke of the 
scaly horror of the Dragon's tail in the desperate effort 
to avert defeat. 

It was indeed the evidence of defeat. The chief mourn- 
ers over the butchery, it must be noted, were not the 
mothers of Bethlehem, but Rachel at Ramah. What does 
this strange transfer of scene and actors signify ? Milton 
following some of the church Fathers tells us. Guided 
by a passage quoted from Jeremiah (Matt. II. 18; Jer. 
XXI. 15) he makes "wailing and loud lament" announce 
the flight of the gods and the muteness of the oracles. 
This is the same as the wailing and lamentation propheti- 
cally referred to Ramah the place of oracles within the 
territory of Benjamin, son of Rachel. Well nigh two 
millenniums before the birth of Christ, it will be remem- 
bered, Rachel had introduced idolatry into Israel when 
she stole and secreted her father's images and it seems to 
have persisted among her descendants in Mount Eph- 
raim (Judg. XVII). At Ramah the prophet Samuel 
lived and Deborah near by. The very air of the place 
was pervaded by the spirit of prophecy (/ Sam. XIX. 
18-24). 



8 



The loss of her "gods," then, is what grieved the spirit 
of Rachel and the murder of the Innocents was the signal 
for the passing away of the system of visible or audible 
signs of a present deity, evil or good, and the introduc- 
tion of pure spiritual worship. The flight of Apollo 
from Delphi was simultaneous with the parting of the 
Genius from Ramah, and the mountains of Ephraim 
re-echoed to the same wailings as the resounding shore 
at Cumae. 

No one knew better than Milton that an idol is nothing 
and that it is the sin it represents which Christ came to 
destroy. The grim image of Moloch is powerless but the 
spirit of War is a hideous fact which needs to be expelled 
from the world. The Deadly Sins are the realities which 
Christ came to abolish; and these incorporated under 
their heathen names are Peor (Lust), Dagon (Covetous- 
ness), Ashtaroth (Pride), Thammuz (Jealousy), Am- 
mon, same as Rimmon (Gluttony) and Moloch (War or 
Murder) . Osiris wages perpetual strife with his brother 
Set, known to the Greeks as Typhon. The two are ap- 
parently related as Law and Vice. The sons of Belial 
(Vice) once carried the ark of the covenant as a charm 
or amulet into battle (/ Sam. IX. 3-22; 11. 12). The letter 
of the law is sometimes antagonistic to its spirit. 
Lawyers were often the most malevolent opponents of 
Christ who was eventually crucified by the law against 
which he had committed no offense (John XIX. 7). 
Christ's mission was to supersede the Law with the spirit 
of Love but his vicarious obedience did not surrender 
men to their passions. Like the infant Hercules he 
strangled as two serpents both condemning Law and 
Vice with its deadly sting. 

These considerations prove that Milton's poetry does 
not consist in mere sonorous proper names with which he 
endeavors to create "a vague sublimity," but it conveys, 
when understood, the loftiest and purest theology under 
the most fascinating imagery. Perhaps no other false 
notion than this of vagueness has led to as many gross 
errors and such absolute indolence where real thinking 
is so richly rewarded. 



III. L' ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO.. 

This study of the two moods, the cheerful or mirthful 
and the studious or melancholy was no doubt suggested 
by King Solomon's self-application to the consideration 
of "wisdom and madness and folly" {Eccl. I. 17). The 
central and major part of each poem is the domain of 
moderation in both the cheerful and the serious mood and 
herein is found the way of wisdom. Madness and folly 
are incidentally dealt with or rather thrust aside at the 
beginning for the real task of the surveyor. 

The cheerful man regards melancholy as a disease, and 
so it is in its extreme manifestation. In this form it is 
the offspring of "Cerberus and blackest Midnight." Since 
the father supplies the masculine element, the animus 
(mind, intellect or reason) of the child, to assign the pa- 
ternity of Melancholy to the rabid Cerberus (j^n. VI. 
421) is to ascribe madness to her. Where ignorance is 
symbolized by darkness, madness is rightly wedded to 
Midnight blackness. But if to the cheerful man Melan- 
choly seems madness to the studious one Mirth is folly. 
Hence the latter denies any paternity to Mirth and thus 
attributes mental vacuity, i. e., idiocy, to her. To that 
unregulated Mirth may easily degenerate. 

A more sympathetic view of Mirth derives her from 
Venus (Love) and ivy-crowned Bacchus (moderate stim- 
ulus of wine). A sager poet (Solomon in Cant. II.) 
finds her origin in Zephyr (the lover "leaping upon the 
mountains and skipping upon the hills") and Aurora 
(the Spring morning) in their glorious frolic among the 
buds and flowers and birds of May. Among men she is 
called "heart-easing Mirth" ; in Heaven the residence of 
spirits uncompounded of bodily organs she is named 
Euphrosyne. 

A sober estimate of Melancholy makes her the daugh- 
ter of Saturn (Cronus, Time) and "bright-haired Vesta" 
(the Hearth-fire) and establishes her in her appropriate 
symbol, the Lamp-light. Her dim essence surrounded 
by the dark is compared to her advantage in usefulness 



10 

with Twilight (Prince Memnon's sister) and Star-Hght 
(Cassiopea the Ethiop queen on the throne of Night). 

I have nowhere seen a recognition of the extraordinary 
compliment in L' Allegro to Milton's favorite poet Pindar 
in the "Lydian airs married to immortal verse." Pindar 
was the ancient apostle of moderation whose triumphal 
odes are a reasonable antidote to "eating cares" that 
might swerve one from the path of "sane happiness" 
(uyUis oA/8os). Pindar freely used Lydian music and men- 
tioned approvingly "Lydian flutes" (O. V. 19), "Lydian 
harmony" {N. IV. 45) and "Lydian tunes" (O. XIV. 17). 
Moreover, as if in allusion to the famous singing swans 
of the Lydian Cayster Pindar was known to the ancients 
as the "Dircaean swan." It is also worth noting how 
perfectly Milton's "soft Lydian airs" convey the soothing 
tones of flute music. Compare it with Dryden's prosaic 
"Lydian measures" to decide which of the two poets 
came to Nature directly and which saw it "through the 
spectacles of books." 

Shall we rest in this ? It might seem as though Pindar 
would be a fair set-off among the ancient lyrical poets to 
Musaeus and Orpheus. But these three have not 
sounded the ultimate notes of Mirth and Melancholy. 
That remains to their Biblical counterparts the writers 
of the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations. 
These are all on the same subject — the spiritual Jerusa- 
lem. It was the King of Jerusalem who expressed his 
disappointment with the life of that city at its most pros- 
perous era (Eccl. I. 1-3). Then the "weeping prophet" 
lamented her captivity in Babylon and received the 
promise of her redemption (Jer. L. 4, &c.) But the au- 
thor of the Song foresaw her eternal union in bliss with 
her Redeemer. The Song was fitted to "Lydian airs"" 
when Paul with this union as a theme exhorted the 
churches in Lydia to the use of "psalms and hymns and 
spiritual songs singing and making melody." St. John, 
brings the theme to its consummation {Rev. XXI) in his 
message to the same churches. The encomium of Milton 
on the Lydian airs is easier to understand from this point 
of view. 



11 

One who has seen in the Harvard Library the copy of 
Pindar thickly interlined with notes in Milton's own 
hand will appreciate how the English poet valued the 
Greek. It was Professor F. N. Robinson, I think, who 
placed the precious volume on my knees. During the 
half hour that it lay there I fear I was but faintly inter- 
ested in Bunyan's Bible, the mss. of Burns, Byron, Shel- 
ley, Scott and other literary treasures of the Sumner Col- 
lection that were shown me. 

It is commonly taught that of the two portraits here 
considered Milton resembled the latter, the melancholy 
type. But it cannot be denied that in his comparison he 
has steadfastly set the former in the higher place of ori- 
gin and power. Joy in heaven is Euphrosyne, one of the 
Graces; Melancholy has no name there, for she has no 
place. By his pathos Orpheus was able to "draw iron 
tears down Pluto's cheek" but Pindar invading the nether 
gloom with his triumphal Odes would have raised a revo- 
lution in the dismal kingdom and conferred immortality 
upon a host of shades. Milton, as elsewhere noted, was 
eminently a cheerful poet and triumphed over despond- 
ency that might with reason have clouded his latter 
years. 

COMUS. 

"There is a tradition that the incident of the Lady's 
being lost in the woods was suggested by an actual ex- 
perience of Lady Alice Egerton and her brothers in the 
Haywood forest near Ludlow. It is said that night over- 
took them in the wood and that Lady Alice was for a 
time separated from her companions. It is more prob- 
able, however, as Masson and Church have suggested, 
that the story grew out of the poem than that the poem 
grew out of the story." — Rolfe. The foregoing judg- 
ment is strongly confirmed by considerations of pro- 
priety. It would be intolerable to have the young peo- 
ple set to enacting a scene which would shadow the honor 
or reputation of the Lady — the only conclusion in a case 
like this. The actors we may be sure were entirely de 



12 



tached in the spectators' mind from the dramatic inci- 
dents. 

The gross misconception of incidents, characters and 
names in the Masque grows out of the endeavor to under- 
stand the matter literally. The Masque is an allegory 
designed to convey a wholesome warning to the English 
church and people. Without adducing the outstanding 
facts of the situation which will occur to students of Eng- 
lish history, as threatening the purity of society and pri- 
vate life we desire to say at once that the play is directed 
against the doctrine and practice of Free-love and ail 
that it implies. Comus the magician impersonates the 
corrupt influence ; the Spirit is the Genius of the Seventh 
Commandment, or Chastity; the Lady is the Christian 
Church of England ; her two Brothers and defenders are 
Reason and Conscience. The significance of the other 
names will appear in due order. 

The Spirit has his mansion "before the starry thresh- 
old of Jove's court." Heaven is ruled by Love, not by 
the Decalogue, but the Virtues which the place demands 
from those who enter are gate-keepers and exclude the 
vicious. Especially is this true of Chastity (Matt, 
XXIL 30). 

The immediate scene of the Spirit's movement against 
his enemy Comus is, however, clearly defined. It is the 
island of Great Britain whose unique relation to the other 
lands and to the seas is given in the Spirit's Prologue. 
Though properly a part of the land surface of the globe, 
because of its isolation and envelopment by the sea, it is 
a part of Neptune's empire rather than Jove's. It is dis- 
tinguished from the other islands which are allotted to 
inferior "tributary gods" (1. 24) that in clouds bring 
Neptune their tribute of rain and hail and snow, either 
directly or through rivers and wear as sapphire crowns 
the stars in the blue heavens over their heads. But 
Britain's importance is evinced, not as often taught by 
its division into four governments, each presided over by 
a section of the great blue-haired deities but by its as- 
signment to the armorial bearings, its quartering upon 
the escutcheon of all the great sea-powers to be worn over 



13 

the heart in token of their obligation to protect and de- 
fend the island, as they" had done less than fifty years be- 
fore when it was threatened by the Spanish Armada. 
Rightly understood, Shakespeare has nothing so magni- 
ficently patriotic. 

It is this favored land so defended by the sea from 
human fleets and armies that Comus has invaded with 
his infernal following from their ranges on the conti- 
nent. His parentage is significant, Bacchus and Circe. 
The tipsy Bacchus furnishes the animus (reason or in- 
tellect) the sorceress Circe supplies the anima (the in- 
stincts, or physical life) . The transformation caused by 
the draught of Comus affects the mind as that of Circe 
aff'ected the body. It is not a device for the convenience 
of the actors, as the critics guess, but the presentation of 
a moral truth that the perversion qt the mind is more 
serious than distortion of the body. As long as the mind 
remains and recognizes the physical plight, there is hope 
of restoration but when the mind refuses to recognize its 
degradation all is lost. 

The revelries of Comus are staged for the night. The 
time for his activities to begin is set in lines 93, 94 : 

"The star that bids the shepherd fold 
Now the top of heaven doth hold." 

Even the natural meaning of these lines has been ob- 
scured by editors who guess that this is "the evening 
star," or more specifically "Venus" or "Hesperus," re- 
gardless of the fact that Venus never appears in the 
zenith ("top of heaven") after nightfall and the other 
fact that she often fails to illuminate the evening sky at 
all in the critical season for flocks. I venture to say that 
not all the instances quoted in illustration from other 
poets could have induced Milton to make such a blunder. 
But in early Spring such a skilled watcher of the stars 
must often have seen Leo with its representative star 
Regulus rising to the zenith as Aries was sinking below 
the horizon and flocks were being folded. That the lion 



14 



was a menace to flocks was recognized in Biblical and 
Homeric times (11. X. 485; XII. 299). 

With a strange inconsequence Shakespeare's "unfold- 
ing star"( Meas. for Meas. IV. ii, 218) is also cited as if 
it were identical with the folding star of Milton. The 
"unfolding star" is Sirius (Canis Major), reinforced, 
perhaps by Procyon (Canis Minor), which rises in the 
Spring before Aries in the morning and "guides the 
starry flock" (Par. Lost V. 709, 710). As the lion is the 
enemy, so the dog is the natural defender of the flock. For 
present purposes the procession across the heavens — 
Procyon, Sirius, Aries, Taurus, Leo — may be regarded 
as belonging to the same scheme, admonitory to the shep- 
herd and herdsman. 

The appeal to Echo (1. 230, etc.) contains certain fea- 
tures that require elucidation. Her airy shell is the 
vault of the sky which like a temple dome receives and 
rolls back the voices from below. But why does she have 
her residence in select parts of the world? Perhaps be- 
cause she is best pleased to dwell where she can hear and 
repeat the sweetest sounds. The margent green of the 
Maeander is not the bank of the river but the leafy moun- 
tain range that borders its valley (II. II. 868-9). At the 
foot of its northern slope flows the Cayster musical with 
its famous swans. The violet-embroidered vale is that 
of the Ilissus above Athens bordered by the violet-hued 
Hymettus and Pentelicus and vocal with its nightingales. 
This would abstractly seem to justify the selection of 
these places as the favorite abode of Echo, but would 
have a very remote relation to the subject of Chastity. 
But in the mountains about the Maeander are Ephesus 
and the churches established by St. Paul and admonished 
in his epistles to purity of life and to "speak to one an- 
other with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (Eph. 
V. 19). The reverberations of these among the mountains 
were sweeter than even the swan-songs of the Cayster. 
In the vale of the Ilissus Paul (himself a nightingale of 
magic effect, Acts XVI. 25, 26) must have uttered 
sweeter and sadder notes "when he saw the city wholly 
given to idolatry" (Acfs XVII. 16). The call of the Lady 



16 

in the absence of her Brothers to Echo is an outward 
sign of the Churches' resort to the Scriptures in times of 
moral and intellectual darkness. In the talk of the 
Brothers there is a clear distinction between the self-con- 
fidence in him who represents Reason and the self-dis- 
trust of him who stands for Conscience. It is also ob- 
servable that the former assumes the initiative in formu- 
lating a philosophy of Virtue and its defenses natural 
and providential, the latter acquiesces and admires ; the 
former is assured of his sister's safety, the latter is more 
hesitant and anxious. 

The cordial offered by Comus (1. 672) to the Lady pro- 
duces an intoxication of Pleasure on a larger scale than 
is promised by the single lapse into unchastity. It works 
a moral relaxation which rejects all restraint; it is more 
than the opiate which the tuife of Thone gave to Jove- 
horn Helena (1. 672) that Nepenthes (NT77r£v^t/s) which 
caused her to forget her "faithful Menelaus" and under 
the management of Venus desert to the perfidious Paris. 
But Polydamna of Thebes was only a spiritual descend- 
ant of another Egyptian woman, the wife of Potiphar, 
who dealt in the same drug bought also at the Pharmacy 
of Asmodeus. But Helen accepted the drug and de- 
stroyed Troy in a ten years' war while the Hebrew youth 
rejected it and saved Egypt in a seven years' famine. 

The antidotes to the magic of Comus are: First, the 
"moly that Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave" (I. 636) ; 
Second, the haemony recommended by a certain shepherd 
lad (11. 619, 638) ; Third, (11. 821-2) the other means used 
by Meliboeus old to reverse the enchanter's wand. 

If my reasoning is correct, the Moly (MwXv., doubtless 
from /xwAos, toil) is labor, physical or mental, Nature's 
corrective for idleness and vice. Homer's description of 
the plant (Odys. X. 302-306), Bryant's Translation, runs 
thus : 

"The root is black. 
The blossom white as milk ; among the gods 
Its name is Moly ; hard it is for men 
To dig it up ; the gods find nothing hard." 



16 

In the next place, who is the shepherd lad and what is 
the root to the efficacy of which he testifies as a protec- 
tion against the allurements of Pleasure? Certainly he is 
not, as pupils are constantly taught, Milton's friend 
Charles Diodati who, so far as we know, had no personal 
defects that made him of small regard to see to and who 
did not pretend to deal in any sort of magic in his medi- 
cal practice. But even had it been otherwise who could 
forgive Milton for perpetuating the memory of his 
friend's personal defects? There is, however, a well- 
known historical character who records his own poor 
reputation for personal presence and who proclaims a 
supernatural specific against the world's vices. Since 
the Spirit, the speaker, is of no special generation but 
exists in all ages, he may find his friends in any age oi 
country. <{ 

The shepherd lad belongs to the first century of oui 
era and is no other than the Apostle Paul, a shepherd 
over the churches but as compared with the othei 
Apostles only a lad, "as one born out of due time" (/ Cor. 
XV. 8, 9). His bodily presence was weak (// Cor. X. 
11) and his stature, as his nickname of Paul probably in- 
dicates, undersized, but his intellect was transcendent 
and excited to ecstasy by the contemplation of divine 
truth (// Cor. XII. 1-4). His Haemony (ai/Awv, from 
iifjM, blood) is the blood-stained cross of Christ, un- 
known and like esteemed by the world (/ Cor. I. 21-25) 
but the highest product of heavenly wisdom. Its prickly 
leaf symbolizes the tribulation that attends its accep- 
tance here and its golden flower its glory in the climate 
of heaven. This conclusion was reached before I knew 
of S. T. Coleridge's nearly identical interpretation of 
Haemony (Letters I. 406,407 Houghton's ed.) Had 
Coleridge recognized the shepherd lad, he would have 
settled the meaning for all time. Paul in this masque of 
Chastity is the chief antagonist of the dark-veiled 
Cotytto, the goddess of impudent Pleasure at Corinth, 
and the great advocate of virginity (purity in man and 



17 

woman) before all to whom his letters come. (/ Cor. VII. 
throughout) . 

Melihoeus ( MeAi/3oios Sweet-singer) should not now be 
hard to recognize. The epithet old following the name 
points to antiquity and at once excludes Edmund 
Spenser or Geoffrey of Monmouth, the favorite guess of 
annotators. Neither of the two, high as the former at 
least stood in Milton's esteem, could with any propriety 
be called the soothest shepherd that e'er piped on plains.. 
Meliboeus shows how to reverse the magician's rod and 
Milton does not require him to narrate the story of 
^abrina. 

King David, "the sweet psalmist of Israel" (/ Sam. 
XXIII. 1), both an actual shepherd on the plains of 
Bethlehem and a shepherd metaphorically as a writer of 
sacred lyrics can very properly be placed at the head of 
lyric poets and musicians. Unlike St. Paul, however, he 
was caught in the snare of Illicit Passion and to reverse 
the enchanter's rod descended into the depths of re- 
pentance and recovered the favor of God through bitter 
suffering (Ps. LVI. 7-17). 

David's innocent child, like Sabrina, suffered death for 
his parents' sin. Thus without a jar we reach a reason 
for the invocation of Sabrina. Called from the depths 
she brings with her precious vialed liquors, the tears of 
penitence (Ps. LVI. 8). These, like life-renewing nectar, 
are evidence of "heart sorrow" and give assurance of "a 
clear life ensuing". The liquors are applied, like the 
waters of baptism, the outward sign of repentance and re- 
generation (Luke III. 3; Titus III. 5), to the breast, the 
lips and the fingers, for the purification of the affections, 
the words and the deeds. 

In the invocation to Sabrina the adjuration of the sea- 
deities is not a mere form for the introduction of proper 
names to convey "a vague sublimity" ; for every name 
adds a motive to make her propitious. The first three 
names stand for parts of the divine judgment on man in 
the third chapter of Genesis. Oceanus ( 'flKcavds, from wki^s, 
swift) is the stream of Human Life, no longer endless 



18 

but cut off by the fleeting years (19) in the penalty of 
Death (Neptune, the Avenger). Tethys (Sorrow) is 
wedded to Life in both man and woman. Then follow 
the Partners in the allotment of Time: Nereus the 
-hoary-headed Past wrinkled with the brood of Sorrows 
'(the fifty Nereids) he has begotten; the elusive Present 
((changeful Proteus, shepherd of Neptune's flocks, the 
clouds) the portentous Future represented in the race by 
scaly Triton the unfeeling trumpeter of calamities such 
as War, Famine and Pestilence, in- the individual by 
Glaucus yAav^, the owl) the ominous monitor of per- 
sonal misfortune and loss ; then three alleviators of hu- 
man suffering found in succession by St. Peter along the 
sea (Acts VI. and X.). Leucothea, the white-goddess, is 
Charity in the person of Dorcas who clothed the poor 
at Joppa; her spiritual son (Portunus) is Hospitality in 
the person of "Simon the tanner" who entertained the 
Apostle in his house by the sea-side; Thetis actuated 
Cornelius the centurion at Caesarea when his conduct il- 
lustrated the fundamental precept of Justice that like 
"God is no respector of persons." Her feet are tinsel- 
slippered because she shows the way to Peace whose feet 
are beautiful upon the mountains 

Last is the consummate plea to the Sirens in the name 
of Virginity itself, to the dead Pay^thenope's dear tomb 
and to the clear-voiced Ligea on her diamond rocks. 
But the profound significance and pathos of this appeal 
are lost unless we see under these names two virgins of 
Sacred Story, one of the Old Testament, the other of the 
New. Like Parthenope, Jephthah's daughter was bewept 
long after death (Judg. X. 1-20) . Like Ligea with a 
golden comb sleeking her soft alluring locks, Mary of 
Bethany draws all the centuries with her hair that wiped 
the Saviour's feet — hair soft with the precious oil and 
alluring with its fragrance as well as the fragrance of her 
deed. Her throne on diamond rocks, is the Saviour's as- 
surance of remembrance through all generations. 

The Epilogue is tense with the rewards of Chastity — 
Love, Beauty, Grace, Activity, Repose, Color, Fragrance, 



19 



Balm. The physical is subordinated to the spiritual. 
Venus sits upon the ground and Jealousy (Adonis) is 
healed of his wound and his nature changed. The under- 
lying motive is the "sage and serious doctrine of Virgin- 
ity" (787) dramatized by Solomon (Song of Songs) and 
unfolded by Paul (Eph. V. 22-23). The marriage of 
Christ and the Church is the perfect union of Desire and 
the Soul as in the myth of Cupid and Psyche. As Wisdom 
(Minerva) sprung from the head of Jupiter so it is pro- 
mised to the royal bride (Ps. XLV. 15, 16) that from her 
side the twins, Youth and Joy shall be born. This an- 
nouncement is made only to those "whose ears are true" ; 
that is, to those who can discern spiritual truth under 
material figures. 

LYCIDAS 

Editors of Milton, doubtless unintentionally, have 
come periously near to showing him as an egotist and a 
boor. The opening of Lycidas has been seized as an op- 
portunity for attributing to the young poet an ostenta- 
tious humility nearly akin to pride, as if he were re- 
luctant to write the elegy because he was preparing for 
a greater task to which he felt himself called. True, he 
shrank from the duty, not, however, for this reason, but 
from a proper regret at having to notice so often the in- 
cursion of death. He was not thinking of himself, but 
of the distinguished men whose departure he had 
lamented in Latin elegies — Richard Redding, College 
Beadle, Dr. Lancelot Andrews, President of Winchester 
College, Vice-chancellor John Gostlin and Dr. Nicholas 
Felton, Bishop of Ely. He grieves over the frequency 
of the calls to this sad duty. His grief is increased by the 
consideration of the youth of this latest death. His 
friend's years and genius were unripe and not his own. 
Nothing could well be more detached from his own in- 
terests or more in harmony with the occasion. 

Boorishness in Milton is assumed in the suggestion 
that the Fauns and Satyrs that attended the pastoral 



20 

piping were Cambridge undergraduates and that "old 
Damoetas was Dr. Bainbridge, Tutor Chappell or some 
other officer of Christ's College. What an estimate of his 
fellow-students this would be, especially in so serious a 
poem! And "old Damoetas" applied to a superior 
functionary would be worse. Such an alumnus instead 
of being honored by students and teachers would pro- 
perly be consigned by them at least to "the milder shades 
of Purgatory." The Satyrs and Fauns attracted to the 
pipings of the so-called shepherds were their own 
caperings, the Mirth and Fun with which they varied 
their sober pursuits and which may have been incorpor- 
ated in the words of the rural ditties or supplied by them- 
selves. Damoetas, nicknamed Polypheme (the Garru- 
lous) is an old shepherd in the sixth Idyl of Theocritus 
and a proper representative of the Tedium which was re- 
laxed by their gay humor. This harmonizes with the 
pastoral conception and frees Milton from the charge of 
a pretense to superiority, mixed with actual contempt, 
over his fellows and instructors. 

We have noticed elsewhere the failure of annotators 
to meet the requirements of Milton's Astronomy. There 
is another instance in their interpretation of the lines, 
"Oft till the star that rose at evening bright 
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering 

wheel". 
Most of them conclude that "any star that so rose' will 
do. This ignores the difference in stars implied in the 
restrictive adjective "bright" and also the identifying 
word ivheel. There is a familiar aggregation including 
the Wagoner (Bootes) and the Wain (Ursa Major) 
dominated by Arcturus, the second brighest star in the 
northern firmament (Homer, II. XVIII. 487-9; Strabo, 
Geog. I 1. 6; Milton, El. Quint. 35, 36, Manso 36, 37) that 
fit^ the conditions especially in accounting for the wester- 
ing wheel. In a variant reading Milton had burnished 
wheel in which he evidently refers to a part of the Wain, 
but in the final form, though susceptible of the same re- 
lation it more significantly applies to the turn taken by 



21 

the constellation as it approaches the niargin of the sky. 
Weste7'ing does not in either case mean, as lexico- 
graphers instruct us, "passing to the west" but rounding 
or circling the west. In the latitude of London the Wain 
does not set, but nearing the horizon sweeps around 
north-westward as along the slope of the sky. The joint 
vigils of the two friends in their high pursuits were pro- 
longed far after midnight. 

In Geography the guides are as untrustworthy as in 
Astronomy. Instead of leading by well-marked roads 
they seem to have a predilection for forcing a way 
through tangled thickets. "The steep" (1. 52) which 
seem.ed to need no name because of its being one of the 
best known natural features of the world has been 
groped for, even by Milton's great biographer of nearby 
Edinburgh, among the unfamiliar mountains of Wales. 
The ship that bore Edward King in issuing from the 
Chester estuary had its prow pointed directly at Fair- 
head the eastward thrust of Giants' Causeway with its 
basaltic columns, 550 feet high, the most conspicuous 
promontory of the Irish coast, further defined as replete 
with relics of the Druids. A modem account of the 
neighborhood is as follows: "The principal cairns are 
one on Colin mountain near Lisbum and one on Slieve 
True near Carrickfergus and two on Colinward. The 
cromlechs most worthy of notice are — one near Caim- 
grainey to the north-east of the old road from Belfast to 
Temple-Patrick, the large cromlech on Mount Druid 
near Ballintoy and one at the northern extremity of 
Island Magee. The mounts, forts and intrenchments 
are very numerous" {Encyc. Brit. art. Antrim) . 

In seeking for the causes of the disaster to the ship 
Milton finds that the winds were perfectly at rest and the 
sky was without a cloud. The conditions were so aus- 
picious that all precautions were laid aside and the 
mariners like those of the ship of Aeneas were lulled to 
sleep {Aen. V. 838-860). The thought occurs that had 
conditions been less perfect, had a fog filled the valley of 
the Dee or storm-clouds (the Nymphs) appeared toward 



22 

Fairhead to the north-west or about Mona to the south, 
more precaution might have been taken. It is a vain 
fancy, for even regard to the genius of King whose 
safety was committed to their care did not make the 
crew vigilant. Is there possibly a hint in the allusion to 
the fate of Orpheus at the hands of the Bacchantes that 
the sailors after the reputation of their sort were drunk 
as well as indifferent? The final blame is put emphat- 
ically upon the ship. Was it the ignorance or malignity 
of the builders, or both, that wrought an unseaworthy 
craft ? These, certainly, under the figure of eclipse or 
malign planetary aspect were to Milton efficient causes 
of misfortunes. Even if there is no direct charge 
against mariners or builders there can hardly be a doubt 
that Milton's mind was traversing these questions. 

The recollection of an easy bit of commercial geog- 
raphy at the right instant might have guarded John 
Ruskin against the slip he made in commenting upon 
the "broken metaphor," blind mouths! in line 119. His 
observation was strictly correct in itself when he said: 
"These two monosyllables express the precisely accurate 
contraries of right character in the two great offices of 
the Church— those of bishop and pastor. A 'Bishop' 
means *a person who sees'. A 'Pastor' means 'a person 
who feeds'. The most unbishoply character a man can 
have is therefore to be Blind. The most unpastoral is in- 
stead of feeding to want to be fed — to be a Mouth. Take 
the two reverses together and you have 'blind mouths' ". 
It is all beside the mark and has misdirected scores of 
editors, hundreds of teachers and thousands of pupils. 

The old geographer Strabo uses the word Ti)^XoorTo/ioy 
(blind mouth) to signify the choked-up mouth of a river. 
The term itself is applied to the channel of the Rhone 
(Geog. B, IV. ch. i. § 8) but its full value is shown in a 
description of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. The 
geographer specifies this as an instance of "a city with- 
out a port owing to the accumulation of the alluvial de- 
posit brought down the Tiber. Vessels therefore bring 
to anchor further out, but not without danger . . being 



23 

lightened of a part of their cargo, they enter the river 
and sail up to Rome" (Geog. B. V. ch. III. § 5). Plutarch 
(Caesar 58) refers to the same condition and tells of 
Caesar's devices to get rid of the obstruction. 

It was not an unusual thing for rivers to be so choked 
up, but it was the Tiber in which Milton was especially 
interested by reason of its relation to Rome and the 
Church and St. Peter. The nautical term is used by the 
pilot of the Galilean lake to rebuke the shallowness, the 
ignorance, the spiritless utterance of the clergy which 
Isaiah had criticised in the religious leaders of an earlier 
day. Milton consciously imitated Isa. LVI. 9-12, and it 
may be noted how the blindness, the dumbness, the igno- 
rance, the drowsiness and the indifference are summed 
up in the expressive term drawn from ancient nav- 
igation. 

The unrecovered body of Edward King, superficially 
regarded as a mere lump of clay, in fancy visits the 
coasts once threatened by the Spanish Armada from 
Plymouth Harbor to the Orkneys. Thus it makes King 
the "genius of the shore", a representative of the 
spiritual forces that must guard England from the de- 
structive errors suggested by the reference to Bellerus 
(monster) and the monstrous world at the two extrem- 
ities of the island. The military angel, St. Michael at his 
post on the gvxirded mount, fortified with cannon in 
Armada days, is still scanning the seas toward Namancos 
(an ancient name for the district about the Spanish Cape 
Finisterre) and Bayona's hold (the Bay of Biscay, the 
gateway to Bayonne) for signs of hostile fleets and 
armies where once they rode, but his attention is called 
homeward where more insidious foes demand a different 
sort of warfare. 



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